


The Truth the Dead Know

by brocanteur



Category: Catcher in the Rye - J. D. Salinger
Genre: Crossover Pairing, M/M, RPF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-01-01
Updated: 2007-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-14 05:29:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/145870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brocanteur/pseuds/brocanteur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Holden Caulfield goes to Hollywood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Truth the Dead Know

I was nearly 24 by the time I got back to Hollywood, crashing at D.B.'s because it was the only place that felt safe, like it wasn't attached to the rest of the phony world. I knew this was a goddamn lie, considering D.B.'s world was all phonies, all glittery and fake. But at least D.B.'s people didn't pretend to be real. New York was filled with that type, the intellectual sort, wearing their ratty suits, pretending to live the hobo lifestyle because it was fucking chic. So, anyway, I had to get away, because I could feel it coming on again, and I didn't want to end up in the loony house, not again.

I'd quit school three times before I finally got my diploma. My parents were not so secretly sick of me by then, seeing as they couldn't find a decent boarding school to take me anymore and I had to end up going to public school. Suited me well enough. The kids were tough as nails, but at least they weren't like old Stradlater, for instance. Those public school kids killed me, with their near-aversion to phoniness.

Anyway. College life wasn't for me. I told D.B. and Phoebe that, and finally my parents. Dad hit the roof, but he couldn't do anything about it, not when I finally split and found a room of my own. I wasn't working yet, but D.B. was doing pretty all right in the movie business, and he'd send me money.

Writing came pretty easily. I'm actually a pretty fine writer, even D.B. said so, and I consider him the best. He still writes stories when he isn't prostituting himself, and a couple have made it into the _New Yorker_. I started publishing too. I figured if I was going to be a liar, I might as well try and make some dough, right?

D.B. told me I should become a prostitute like him, make some real money, but I told him it wasn't for me. He pushed it, though, and so I went to Hollywood again, had my hand shaken by all sorts of studio sharks. Boy, their teeth are sharp, and they're ready to take a bite out of you.

—

When I met Jimmy, I was on the verge of twenty-five, and my whole head had nearly turned gray. I probably looked like I was in my thirties, what with all the smoking I was doing, and the late nights boozing and whatnot. Jimmy'd just been in a picture based on the Steinbeck novel, which I greatly admired. I couldn't imagine it being made into some crappy movie. I told Jimmy that, when D.B. introduced us on the Warner lot. Jimmy just sort of laughed at that, and it was probably the first thing that endeared me. "You know, John Steinbeck helped write the screenplay," he said.

I'd forgotten Steinbeck had turned whore too. I guess it happens to everyone, sooner or later. I almost said so, but instead I shrugged and lit up another cigarette. Jimmy asked if he could bum one, and that was it. I didn't see him again until I was a whore too, working on some turkey of a television show called "Look Up and Live," helping write a teleplay for an episode that featured Sal Mineo. Mineo was okay, a bit fey, if you ask me, but all right, as far as actors go.

For some goddamned reason, he seemed to like me, Mineo did, and he was constantly asking me out to lunch. Finally I said yes, the day he said he was celebrating getting a part in this Nicholas Ray movie. When we walked into the restaurant, there was Jimmy and a girl I recognized as Natalie Wood. She'd grown up in the business, so she was mostly fake through and through, but she gave me what looked like a genuine, toothy smile when Mineo introduced us. "I like your name," she said, and the way she said it, kind of shy-like... Well, it was cute, and sort of reminded me of Phoebe, whom I missed like I'd lost a limb.

"I remember you," Jimmy said, pointing and grinning crookedly. He wore glasses, which made him look better, not so handsome. They suited him.

"Well, that's great," I said. "That makes two of us."

They were a nice bunch, if you ignored the fact they were actors, and I did, because I was old enough then to ignore a lot of humanity's faults. You kind of have to, if you're going to live past a certain age, you know?

Natalie told me, during those days I'd drop in on the set, that she'd first thought, because of my hair, that I was as old as Raymond Burr, whom she'd seen on the sly. Now it was obvious to everyone the girl had an old man fetish or a father complex, some sort of psychological issue, at any rate, because she was then attaching herself to Nick Ray like he was a life raft. It kind of made me mad, because she was just a kid, younger than Phoebe at that, and here were all these geezers glomming on to her. It just made me sick.

I told Jimmy that, but he shrugged it off, saying it was really her business and Nicholas Ray was a nice man, most of the time. She'd find her way on her own.

Jimmy was like that, sometimes—off in his own world. I knew he cared about Natalie, but he wasn't going to get in the way of her living her life. I said to him, "Buster, ain't it obvious you don't have a kid sister."

—

I'd known from the get-go that Mineo was queer down to his shoes; he didn't really make it much of a secret. He hung around with a lot of good-looking kids, and they made no bones about touching and kissing each other, and what have you. I was pretty much immune to it, by then. Hollywood made you a whore, and it inoculated you from the depravities of life while it was at it.

What I hadn't known, but probably would have if I'd asked around, was that Jimmy was part of the homosexual crowd. Oh, he had girlfriends and such; he'd told me once he was head-over-heels for some actress called Pier Angeli, whom I'd never met or seen. He talked about her like she was the living end, but he never got around to bringing her on set, or to any parties I was at.

One night, after a long day of shooting (I had not been on the set that day, I'd been writing my bony fingers off for a piece I was thinking of sending off to _Esquire_ ), Jimmy and Mineo and I went off to a party at Hopper's place (he was in the movie too, and a two-bit actor, the kind of sonofabitch that isn't afraid to proclaim how good he is), a crummy apartment that wasn't too far off the lot. The booze was flowing liberally and I helped myself enough to almost drown out the sound of all the _fake fake fake_ invading my senses.

"You're not having fun?" Jimmy asked, pushing his glasses up his nose, taking a kind of wobbly stance in front of me as he held on tightly to his beer bottle. He'd found me in a corner, skulking, in fact, and smoking like a chimney. It was all that was keeping me from yelling out at all the creeps whose realm _I'd_ invaded.

"What's it look like?" I asked, morosely. Boy, I sure am a lousy drunk.

"Looks like you're downright miserable."

I tilted my head back at him and closed one eye. "You're smart. Say, where are you from?" All this time, I'd just assumed Jimmy had sprouted fully-formed from some Hollywood agent's head, he was that perfect.

"Indiana."

That was my second guess. Oh, the great Midwest. "Indiana? Christ, Jimmy, you some kind of cowpoke?"

Jimmy kind of laughed and hunched down beside me. I could smell the booze on his breath, he was that close. "What are you?" he half-giggled. "Some prep school jerk?"

I rolled my eyes. No doubt he'd been talking to D.B. and having laughs at my expense. Well, I liked Jimmy enough to ignore it. I took the cigarette from my mouth and offered it to him. "Peace pipe," I said.

He took it and stared at it for a moment, what with his drunken stupor, then he looked back at me and nodded, took a long drag. "You know, Holden," he said as he exhaled a puff of smoke right into my face, "I think writing's what I want to do some day. It'd be... Well, it'd be some kind of culmination, I think."

I blinked at him a couple of times, because of the smoke, mostly, but also because I couldn't believe what he was saying. "What about the movie business, Jimmy? Don't you wanna keep being a whore?" I don't think I'd ever called Jimmy a whore to his face.

He shook his head. "Acting's just a lie to you, ain't it? But it gets down to the bottom of all truths, when it's done right. And only writing's better for that. You think you lie when you write, you told me so once, but it's the opposite, Holden. The complete, polar opposite."

I didn't really remember telling him that, but, then again, there were a lot of things I told Jimmy I never meant to tell anyone. I stole the cigarette back from him.

He put his hand on my knee, Jimmy did, and it was warm and steady.

"Hey, Jimmy, come meet someone." Hopper looked like an overexcited puppy dog, not caring that he was barging in on a private conversation, the creep.

"I'm busy, Dennis," Jimmy told him, mild as can be. "This is Holden Caulfield. He's a writer." He patted my knee. "He's important."

"Oh, hey," Hopper said, barely glancing at me.

"Wanna take off?" I asked, sucking on my cigarette. It was the alcohol, and Jimmy, that made me braver than I really was. I've been beaten up more times than I can count, and I try not to start confrontations I can't win. And Hopper looked like a dirty fighter.

He glared and slithered away, back to some other dingy corner of his apartment. Honestly, the guy was a slob.

Jimmy squeezed my knee and grinned at me, wide, like a funny kind of chimp, with his thick glasses and his hair standing on end. I must've been staring at his teeth, because he tapped on the two front ones and said, "They're not real. I lost these, in a motorcycle crash. Splat and gone!"

I leaned closer and tapped a tobacco-stained fingernail against them, just like he had. "Huh. So, where'd these come from?" I asked. I was feeling that kind of silly.

"They're an illusion, boy. A figment of your imagination. You're just filling in the gap." He giggled again and his shoulder bumped mine.

"That's craziness," I said. My finger was pressed against his teeth. "I can feel them!"

Jimmy's lips wrapped around my finger before he reached and pulled it from his mouth. He held onto my hand though. His skin was still cool from holding on to that beer bottle. He leaned in little by little, his breath commingling with mine. I cleared my throat, staring at him come closer until I was cross-eyed. Finally I just closed my eyes, and that's when I felt him kiss me, really kiss me, like you see in the movies—men fifty feet tall, bending women into submission with their mouths. This felt like that, I guess. Like I was bending to Jimmy's will. I hadn't kissed anybody in over a year, and that girl had been a ready-made prostitute from Columbia Pictures.

I don't know how many men Jimmy had kissed, but he was good at it. It felt good, I mean. It was a little sloppy, and wet, but we were both breathing really hard by the end. His hand was wrapped around my nape, holding me close, and his forehead was pressed against mine. "Jesus, Jimmy."

He kept me pinned with his gaze, and I could see, behind his glasses, that his eyes were bloodshot. His lips were still wet from his saliva, or mine. His hand slid up from my knee to my inner thigh, and it wasn't like I wasn't already hard; that maneuver just made me groan like I was in pain. I guess I kind of was. Right up my leg, his fingers kept on, until they wrapped around me and, oh, goddamn, but I nearly lost it. I closed my eyes as he squeezed me, murmuring, "This okay, Holden?" And why was he asking that ridiculous question?

"Don't you fucking stop, Jimmy," I managed. Right there, in that filthy room, filled with creeps and fakes, Jimmy started stroking me. I saw stars, it felt so good. Felt better than anything. He kissed me again, his mouth open, and I pushed my tongue inside, feeling around, sliding over his fake front teeth, down his throat. I could have swallowed him alive, I was that hungry.

I came fast, my body shuddering, Jimmy's face pressed against my throat. "Jesus," I said, again. Me and my blaspheming tongue.

We left the party a few minutes later, and I had to hold a paperback I'd stolen off Hopper's coffee table to hide the stain on the front of my slacks.

Jimmy drove me back to D.B.'s, his Porsche swerving down Sunset as he took curves a little too fast. It didn't bother me then. It suited the kind of night I was having.

When he stopped in front of the apartment building, he kissed me again. The convertible top was down and a Santa Ana breeze picked up, touching everything. When I finally got out of the car, I walked on leaden legs; my head was swimming, and I felt like I was submerged in some giant fish tank and all I could do was move in slow motion.

"Hey, Holden!" I turned back, still holding Hopper's filthy paperback in front of my lap. "Write me a story, will you?"

"What kind of story?" My tongue was fat in my mouth.

"Something nice, about you and me. But not really, you know?"

I nodded and he waved at me as he sped off.

—

I didn't write Jimmy's story until he was long gone and I was living back in New York, being a fake-intellectual playwright.

Phoebe told me we all become what we despise.

Someday, someone will pull out yellowed pages from the trunk in my attic and read a story with more truth in it than all its lying words could hide.


End file.
